


Movements Made to Kill

by Glowingchaos



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, a very russian Natasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 09:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4257804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glowingchaos/pseuds/Glowingchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looked at her and saw the brightest fire of her hair mixed with the darkest crimson that never belonged splattered against the broken innocence of her face, and the entirety of her outside was made of color but the whole of her inside was the dimmest gray. And he had a new mission, the most urgent mission yet, because it came from within him, within his heart. Brighten her sorrowful soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movements Made to Kill

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [in the valley of the dolls we sleep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2172780) by [Shadows_of_a_Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadows_of_a_Dream/pseuds/Shadows_of_a_Dream). 



> This is based off of Shadows_of_a_Dream 's works based around Clint and Natasha, more specifically "in the valley of the dolls we sleep". I know my writing style isn't nearly as beautiful as theirs, but I tried. If you're them and you're reading this, you're literally my favorite author in the entirety of AO3 and probably the internet. <3

The flames licked through the highest windows, encircling the two forms at the top with seemingly nowhere to go. The fire and her hair looked the same- wild, untamed, and the brightest orange one could imagine. The thought of ‘Beautiful’ whispered itself into existence in the back of his mind. He tried feebly to push it away. Someone was supposed to be assassinated on this rooftop (maybe it was both of them). But while her hair mimicked the blazing inferno around them, her forest eyes were frosted over, no spark of hope as she half-heartedly gripped her shoulder in a programmed response to stop the bleeding. She was gone, a piece of shrapnel, made of a precious metal thrown away from her place in the world by a violent explosion that was the collapse of her organizers. That place, the one she was thrown from, gave her a fake spark. One of fear, not of passion. But that passion was stamped out and replaced, and that fake spark was left to die out when there was no more push to stoke the flames. She did not want to be, and she posed no threat.

He lowered and unloaded his bow, replacing the arrow back in its quiver.

“Do it,” she called out, above the roar of the flame. She seemed almost angry, with her voice raw after the years of screaming. There was so much screaming in this world of secrets. Weren’t secrets supposed to be silent? “You’re a coward! Do it, kill me then, if you are such a great warrior!” Her accent was slipping through. It slipped through because she did not care anymore. There was a long pause.

The first time he said it, she could not understand him through the many tongues, of language and of fire. “Come with me,” he repeated, offering his unarmed hand to the woman. He offered life to the woman who was never more than three inches from death.

She jumped, instead, into the river, the one that was next to the hotel that crumbled below their feet. She never turned away, but walked, or stumbled, backwards, separated herself from him, and fell. He couldn’t tell if she went through the flames or not. But she willed herself into that black river anyways.

And he followed. He jumped off that goddamn roof, into that muddied river, and barely thought twice about it. He was going to save her.

She hadn’t kept herself oriented, maybe she had passed out before she hit the water, and he had to fight the raging current, dragging her broken body and shattered soul through the angry pull of the water, but he didn’t care. Something about the lack of spark in her eyes made the one in his burn even more. He had a need, strong as any desire for food or water (even though it came from his head and not his body), to save her. There was something about the forbidden tears edging at her eyes, the complete desire to just get it over with that made him need to show her that the world wasn’t hell. A need for her last breath to be when she’s older, when she knows all of the world, not just the Red Room, not just the pain she felt and dealt, and not just the absolute destruction of everything in that hell that she ever knew. 

He carried her limp, soaking body to his hotel room, up the fire escape, and cared for her. He kept her in her clothes, of course; her body was not any goal of his. It was just getting her dry; propping her body against the side of the bed, hidden from the door, and rubbing her clothes clean carefully with the measly amount of towels provided. There was probably silt collecting in her suit, but he wouldn’t risk taking it off. She’d think he was like every other man she had met, and the prominent majority of those were dead by her. So he dried her off as best he could, splinted her broken forearm, ring finger, and collarbone, placed her in the bed delicately, like she was the thinnest spider strands of glass that could go shattering at any wrong movement, and covered her with the sheets.

No doubt about what he was doing crossed his mind as he slept on the floor.

She woke with a fear-filled gasp, half from rolling onto her injured side, and half from the fact that she didn’t know where she was. He drowsily awoke at the noise, muttering a ‘huh what’ and scanning the room sloppily before stopping at her. “Oh. Morning. I talked to SHIELD last night, they’ve granted you amnesty from your past and protection from the remnants of the Red Room. I tried to clean you up best I could, but there’s probably still silt everywhere in your uniform. The bathroom’s yours to use, I won’t interrupt,” he rambled. She slowly pried herself up with her legs hanging off the bed during his speech, and sat there for a bit before anything came out of her mouth.

“Why?” she asked, her voice feeble, and she looked as though she was ashamed not to have the strength to correct herself, to make her voice stronger, to make herself seem more intimidating. 

“I saw you up on that roof. Saw how broken you were, how life meant absolutely nothing to you at all, and couldn’t let you leave this world with that being your last thought-“ he tried to explain himself.

“You saw that I would be an asset. You are getting me to work for you,” she simplified incorrectly.

“No. Even if you were a passerby on a street, I still would care. You’ve only seen one side of the world. I’ve seen a few more,” he reiterated.

“I have been around the world, Hawk, trained in many different places. I have seen many sides,” she said, confused.

“I mean perspectives on life. Paths of life experience. You’ve only known what they’ve taught you in the Red Room. I’ve known the life of a soldier, a civilian, a fighter, a world traveler, and more,” he explained.

He could see the cogs turning in her brain, trying to connect. It seemed like the first time she had encountered something she didn’t have a protocol for. He wasn’t sure if it was kindness he showed her, or the challenge to her omniscient, malevolent gods that were the teachers of the Red Room, still whispering away in her mind. 

“Go shower,” he prompted. Her head snapped up at him, jolted from her thoughts. She paused a second, then retreated to the bathroom. She cried in the shower. It was quiet, most likely not audible without the augmented hearing aids that he wore. He wondered when the last time she cried was. She reentered, in her suit (mildly damp), and sat in the furthest corner from him.

“Take the bed, rest,” he prompted.

“What do you want from me?” she hissed, “You’re, you make my brain hurt.”

“Do you not know what confusion is?” he asked.

“Weakness,” she spat. 

“Confusion. Not knowing what’s happening, what to do, or when information conflicts,” he explained. Maybe she never had it in her training. "Not weakness, just conflict of knowledge."

She nodded, though with eyes squinted in distrust.

“Yes, I have confusion,” she confirmed with a grave militaristic look on her face, jaw set, as though she was reporting to a handler.

“You’re confused because you don’t know what I want? I want to help you,” he offered in explanation.

“No one helps people without something in return, and no one helps me at all,” she countered. “So what do you want? A hit on someone? Fighting techniques?”

“No, I don’t want anything from you,” he said again, “I just want to help you.”

Her brow knitted together in that new feeling again, confusion, then her face fell flat, a smirk slowly drifting up, Her hands glided towards the zipper down the front of her uniform, slowly, seductively unzipping it a little ways as she stood and sauntered towards him, “So this is what you want?” she asked, biting her lip. He saw no flicker in her mask, but the sudden change in attitude said that it was fake - a reflex. He refused.

“No, I won’t do that to you.”

Her face suddenly went from sultry to annoyed, angry even. “You make no sense.” He could hear her accent slip again. She tried to grab at him, but he caught her wrist before she could harm him. He made no advances to hurt her or be sexual with her, instead gently placing her hand back at her side.

There were no movements made to kill after that.


End file.
